Hello,
TLDR; The Northeastern administration is delaying our union election through litigation. They want to segregate us by trying to force us into excluding Master’s students and workers at the Nahant and Burlington campuses from our unit. They are even putting our colleagues at other academic institutions in jeopardy by hiring a notoriously anti-union law firm to challenge every graduate workers’ right to unionize. We must fight back, not only for ourselves but for our colleagues nationwide. Please sign our We want to Vote Yes Petition and join us on Sunday March 19th for a potluck and strategizing event to tell Northeastern that we demand our union election NOW.
We want to give you an update on where we stand in our progress of securing our union election. On February 6th, we filed for our union recognition election with the NLRB so we could officially vote for our union and have it certified by a federal agency. Our unionization will require Northeastern to sit down and bargain with us by law.
Since we filed, the Northeastern administration has done nothing but show contempt, spread disinformation, and disrespect graduate workers at every opportunity. They began by sending multiple disinformation emails that only gave half truths, and included fear tactics to scare us out of our organizing. In the NLRB process, Northeastern challenged all graduate workers’ right to a union, threatening not just us but also 30,000+ of our colleagues across the nation who have formed unions in the past year and a half.
Northeastern could have agreed to an election so all graduate workers could have voted in a timely election. The administration was only willing to discuss limiting our rights. We could not in good conscience abandon some of our colleagues whom we have worked together with all along. So, we went to hearings to testify that all graduate workers belong together. During the hearings, they disrespected and denigrated graduate worker witnesses and our work! Their drawn out, litigious plan to dissect and divide us in hearings is delaying our election.
I am frustrated by how I was treated on the stand. Every question they asked felt like an attack or like they were intentionally trying to infantilize and discredit me. It was insulting that after years of working hard as a TA, RA, and student group organizer, Northeastern would pay an expensive law firm to attack my integrity and legitimacy. Their attempts to divide us are wasting everyone’s time and money, and this is just another example of that.
– Lisa Oakley, 3rd year in Computer Science who testified in our hearings
NLRB Hearings
So, here is where we stand: Northeastern has challenged our right to a union and is arguing that Masters and PhD graduate workers should not be able to unionize together. They also want to force us to exclude workers at the Nahant and Burlington campuses. While the NLRB initially threw out the administration’s objections to graduate workers’ right to unionize, Northeastern may still challenge it again later. Whether Masters, PhD, and the satellite campus graduate workers can be in the same unit are still being decided.
Every step of the way, Northeastern’s expensive and notoriously anti-union law firm has done everything they can to further the delays, disrespect us, and divide us. The hearings concluded last Wednesday, but the process is far from over. We made strong arguments that we belong together, just like the graduate workers at Harvard, Columbia, UC, UW and more. Now, we must wait for the NLRB Regional Director to issue a decision. Once the Regional Director issues their decision, they will order an election.
What’s next?
With hearings over, it’s important that we use this time to do everything we can to make the Northeastern administration respect democracy and stop delaying our union election. The administration’s tactics are designed to weaken us so that they can protect their money and power.
But we do not have to play their games by their rules, and we shouldn’t.
Here are some ways that you can help:
- Sign the We want to vote YES for our union
We have launched a I want to Vote Yes sign on, to show the broad level of support for our union, now! We are launching it today to show the administration our overwhelming level of support and desire for our union. Please add your name to the petition by filling out this form. Once we reach an overwhelming level of support, we intend to share it on our website and social media. Please add your name and join us in our call to the admins to give us back our vote! - Plan of Action Potluck (Plotluck)
Join us for a socializing event on Sunday, March 19th from 5:00PM-8:00PM to meet fellow grad students and organize our plan to push back against Northeastern’s anti-union agenda. It will be a potluck, so bring a dish of your own (or napkins, plates, utensils– let us know!). Please fill out this RSVP form so that we can plan accordingly. It’ll be held in Jamaica Plain (there will also be an online option);we will send details once we are closer to the event. We deserve better and we’re going to make the vote happen for all of us. - Help Organizing in your Department (Reply to this email)
Northeastern’s admins are fighting us because they know that when we organize, we win. And they have shown they do not want us to win, even if it means hurting tens of thousands of organized graduate workers across the U.S. It takes all of us working together to succeed, and we always need more help. If you can get involved and help with outreach to grad workers in your program, let us know by replying to this email, and we can reach out to talk about how.
We will keep you updated as we continue our progress, but hope to see all of you soon.
In solidarity,
GENU-UAW Organizing Committee